Date: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 Re:  France – Strike Update Received below updated regarding strike situation in France : Strikes and go-slows are again scheduled in all French ports with a  24-hour strike on Wednesday, no night shifts on Thursday and Friday, and 24-hour strike from Saturday 3pm until Sunday 3pm.  Wednesday's strike will be an all-out strike with all categories of workers, dockers, crane drivers taking part, to put pressure on the Government which will be holding a Cabinet meeting tomorrow to discuss the proposed port reform. We will be unable to get containers in and out of the terminals and no vessels will be loaded/unloaded. Numerous calls at both Le Havre and Fos/Mer have been cancelled since the strikes began on April 14th. Containers have been rescheduled on the next available vessel with no guarantees they will indeed call at these ports. Le Havre is currently not as badly impacted at Fos, which is now a major problem due to saturation of one of the terminals, Eurofos. Carriers are refusing to take bookings for Fos--Evergreen have gone as far as to announce they will not call Fos/Mer before the end of May. We have 3 categories of shipments to handle ex -Fos: 1. containers already on the terminal - it is feasible to pull these containers from the terminal during the working hours slots. They can then be moved to other ports, mainly Barcelona, Genoa and Antwerp. Ops staff will revert to you on a case by case basis with the options and costs. Note that due to congestion in Barcelona, containers must be delivered no more than 5 days before vessel ETD. 2. containers loaded but not delivered, currently on private depots - these can be diverted to other ports. Again our Ops staff will revert to you on a case by case basis with the options and costs. 3. containers scheduled to be loaded - Ops staff will offer alternatives plus the costs.